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South East Europe 2020 strategy for creating 1 million jobs in the region adopted in Sarajevo today

SARAJEVO, 21 November 2013 – Creation of one million new jobs in South
East Europe (SEE) until 2020 is the most important aim of the strategy dubbed
“Jobs and Prosperity in a European Perspective”.

The RCC’s SEE 2020 strategy was adopted in
Sarajevo today at the Ministerial Conference of the South East Europe
Investment Committee, co-chaired by the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina
and the RCC. The ministers put forward food and beverages processing and
tourism as the priorities for action under SEE 2020.

The event brought together economy ministerial delegations
from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo*, Montenegro,
Romania, Serbia and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, representatives
of the European Union and other regional and international partners and
initiatives, international organizations, and donor community.

Goran Svilanović, Secretary General of the Regional
Cooperation Council, underlined that SEE 2020 is a regional strategy, but it
envisions action at the national level. “We believe that the way to prioritize this
is to take a sectorial approach. The EU itself grew out of the cooperation in
coal and steel sectors. With this in mind, we have reached a consensus on two
first sectors for prioritization: food and beverage processing and tourism.
These sectors will be seen through the lens of the five pillars of the strategy
– integrated, smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, underpinned by good
governance - through prioritizing removal of trade barriers and promoting
investment in the given sector, upgrading skills and promoting labour mobility,
prioritizing infrastructure investment to support supply chains related to the
sector, and ensuring an enabling governance framework. In other words, we want
to make sure that most of the things we do in the implementation of SEE 2020 in
the next few years addresses these sectors first,” said Mr Svilanović.

“Regional cooperation in the Western Balkans must play
a critical role in accelerating economic growth, reducing poverty and economic
disparity, raising productivity and employment, and strengthening institutions.
It is to assist narrowing the development gaps between the countries of our
region by building closer trade integration, intra-regional supply chains, and
stronger financial links, while empowering the economies to speed their own
expansion through a regional approach,“ said Ermina Salkičević-Dizdarević,
Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.

The Head of the EU
Delegation/European Union Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Ambassador Peter Sorensen, said that Regional Cooperation Council and the
countries of the region have done an impressive job in preparing the
comprehensive SEE 2020 strategy. “This strategy commits governments and
provides clear policy guidance to many regional initiatives on how to best
engage with national governments in order to make best use of regional
cooperation. In fact, a fully functioning market economy with the capacity to
compete inside the EU single market is an accession criteria as defined by the
Copenhagen European Council. As the EU attaches such importance to reforms in
the areas of employment and economic competitiveness we have placed these
topics high on the list of priorities for funding under IPA 2. The importance
of recovery, the opportunities of EU accession und the benefit of regional
cooperation are three main reasons that should guide the SEE 2020 moving
forward,“ said Mr Sørensen.

The goal of the SEE 2020 strategy is to improve living
conditions in the region and bring competitiveness and development back in
focus, closely following the vision of the EU strategy Europe 2020.
It stresses out the shared vision of the SEE economies to open up to 1 million
new jobs by 2020, by enabling employment growth from39% to
44%, increase of total regional trade turnover by more than double from 94
to 210 billion euro, the rise of the region’s GDP per capita from
current 36% to 44% of the EU average,and the addition of
300,000 highly qualified people to the workforce.

The strategy was developed by the RCC
Secretariat in consultations with governments from SEE, European Commission and
relevant regional and international institutions, following a mandate by the
region’s ministers of economy.

* This designation is without
prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ
Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.